Photobucket, Whid's preferred choice to store pics.

Photobucket snaps a portrait of success


JEFFERSON GRAHAM, USA TODAY


Photobucket is by far the No. 1 online photo-sharing site. But if you're not a MySpace user, you've probably never heard of it.
Denver-based Photobucket provides a one-stop shop for uploading pictures and videos all over the Web at sites such as Craigslist, eBay and most prominently, red-hot social network MySpace. So many teens and young adults use it that the site has more than 40 percent of all online photo-sharing traffic, considerably more than longtime photo leaders Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly and Yahoo Photos, according to measurement service Hitwise.
Photobucket serves up 3 billion online images and videos daily for its 41 million members; 85,000 new members sign up every day.
Before Photobucket's 2003 debut, most photo sites existed to sell prints and accessories, with limited sharing. Alex Welch, CEO and co-founder of Photobucket, thought there could be a better way. He wanted Photobucket to serve as a photo depot for simple uploads across a wide swath of the Web.
The site is advertising-supported. It hosts pictures and videos for free. The company makes money by displaying ads while customers wait for photos and videos to upload. "This works, because you have users at a captive time," says Welch, 30. "They are waiting for the upload to finish."
Advertising clients include such companies as Microsoft, eBay and AT&T.
Many people use photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo's Flickr and Kodak Gallery to exhibit their pictures and show them to friends, but Photobucket's share is overwhelming - 41 percent for Photobucket, compared with 10.2 percent for Yahoo Photos and Flickr, according to Hitwise.
By appealing to the same young adult audience as social-networking sites MySpace and YouTube, Welch hit on a winning formula that has fueled massive traffic and membership.
"They are riding the coattails of MySpace," says Hitwise general manager Bill Tancer.
And like MySpace (snapped up by 20th Century Fox owner News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million) and YouTube (bought by Google for $1.7 billion last year), Photobucket could be on the auction block.
The company, which Welch says will be profitable in 2008, has hired investment bank Lehman Bros. to explore a sale. The company confirms this but wouldn't comment further.
Michael Arrington, editor of financial deal site TechCrunch, says Photobucket is being shopped for between $300 million and $400 million, but "if it gets into a bidding war, it could go higher."
On the map


Welch got the idea for Photobucket while working at Level 3 Communications, a Denver-based telecommunications firm that provides behind-the-scenes network services for Internet and telephone companies. Co-worker Darren Crystal, an engineer, joined him as co-founder. They quietly put up the site, with no advertising, hoping word would spread. Along the way, they raised $17 million from a variety of venture-capital firms.
Users of teen/young adult social-networking sites LiveJournal and Xanga quickly discovered Photobucket as a way to add images to their text blogs for free. With that, "We were now on the map," Welch says.
Crystal, 36, says his main responsibility is making sure the site can handle its massive traffic. "It's a constant challenge," he says. Photobucket has 1,000 servers spread across the country and is constantly adding more, he says.
The 3 billion images on Photobucket are shown on more than 300,000 Web sites, Photobucket says - the bulk of them at MySpace. In March, 56 percent of Photobucket's traffic came from MySpace, according to Hitwise. Next up: 4 percent from Google searches and 2.6 percent from Yahoo searches.
The dependence on MySpace could prove to be a vulnerability, Hitwise's Tancer says. "They have so much success tied to one distribution channel," he says. "If MySpace augments and improves its own photo-sharing functionality, then what happens?"
Photobucket and News Corp. recently patched up an advertising dispute that had temporarily blocked Photobucket users from posting video on MySpace.
News Corp. said the videos contained advertising; Welch says they did not. Welch says he's opened lines of communication and established a set of procedures with MySpace to ensure that Photobucket content won't be blocked again.
Sundays are the biggest days for Photobucket, with each successive Sunday setting a new company record for the amount of images uploaded. More than 8 million were uploaded last weekend.
About 30 percent of the uploaded images aren't photographs, but homemade animations, icons and avatars supplied by the Photobucket community.
For instance, a search for "Happy Birthday" results in greeting card-style digital art of cakes, cupcakes and candles, and "Glitter" produces shiny names and glittery princess crowns.
"What I never expected when we started the company was for so much homemade art," Welch says. "People love to see things that move and glow. It's so much more than just a bunch of stock happy birthday pictures."

I've used photobucket for a few years, and I love it!!!

i use photobucket. WOOT WOOT

WOOT! Me too! WOOT WOOT WOOTEN WHID!!!

Yea, Whidden PHOTOBUCKET is fantastic.

I remember you were the first to pimp it to me. That's all I use now.

Kris or Heck! pimped it to me back in 2003, can't remember which one it was.

I fell in love with photobucket right away. Now I'm a bucket head.

Whidden was the one that showed me photobucket and i love it!!!!!

Yeah, I remember telling you about pb, Dave. A couple of us were using it, all the time. Glad that you've all jumped on the wagon with us!!!

Bullshit, I told him about it.

I only started using it because that asswipe other image hosting place started to charge. I was like... okay, let me use the other free one more that's x10 better than your lame site. Douches.

-HECK!

I'm just saying that I was telling people, all over INR, about using PB, because it's all that I've ever used for online storage. Never had another thing. Both you and me, Heck, we're talking about it, on the other board, now and again.

Well NEITHER ONE OF YOU TWO told ME about it. I found it through someone else and now use it all the time.

so there.

No, I was the only one talking about it!

Kidding, I have no clue. I don't remember telling anyone about it. I don't share.

-HECK!

My memory is refreshed, it was Forumuser3 who told me about it. Good old FU3. Awesome.

I thought it was Jack123.

...or KenNJ?

-HECK!

No, those two told me about gay rest area's.

Are there any other kind?

-HECK!

There are Amish rest areas. I don't dig the beards with no mustache. Creeps me out.

Actually Whid... I decorated the Anus Burger rest stop just for you!

Them gay rest area's sure are purty. Now I know who to thank.

[size=18]Murdoch wants Photobucket in his cart
REUTERS TUESDAY, MAY 08, 2007 05:00:17 PM]



LAS VEGAS/SAN FRANCISCO: MySpace, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has reached a preliminary deal to acquire Photobucket, the world's top photo-sharing site, for around $250 million in cash, a source familiar with the deal said.
Photobucket functions like a kind of Swiss bank for depositing and transmitting photos, helping Web users post their photos on other social networking sites, instead of trying to keep the users locked up on its own site.
Besides MySpace, Photobucket is popular on sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, eBay, Craigslist, Blogger and Xanga.
While hardly known outside the youthful world of social network sites, Photobucket has become wildly popular with users for providing free, online storage tools for multimedia self-expression, from photos to videos to digital slideshows. Site builders turn to it for images to decorate their sites.
The four-year-old startup, based in Palo Alto, California, has signed up 41 million registered users, up from 32 million at the end of last year and 2 million in 2004. It now hosts nearly 2.8 billion images on the site.
Spokesmen for Photobucket and MySpace were not available to comment on the deal.
The agreement with MySpace, the world's top online meeting place and part of NewsCorp.'s Fox Interactive online business, is tentative and could still fall apart, the source cautioned.
The site was founded in the suburbs of Denver by two young telecoms engineers at Level 3 Communications Inc.

Man, $250 million. I bet a lot of that will be in stock, but still. Couple young bastards with a good idea on an internet startup. Bless them and their image hosting greatness.

-HECK!

That other article I read said it won't even make money till next year. Crazy.

I don't know. That would mean that Murdoch would own Fox News, Fox, 24, MySpace and now Photobucket. And SkyNews. Man already owns Bill O'Rielly and Jack Bauer, does he need the Whid in there as well?

The greedy bastard.

Not to mention 20th Century Fox, The New York Times, and The TV Guide. Son of a bitch.

-HECK!

What? So dude partially owns Star Wars?

No. Lucas owns all of Star Wars. Fox paid for it, distributed it and profited greatly off it, but Lucas owns all rights.

-HECK!